Stepping Forward
by Tobirion
Summary: Cloud first saw him on a recruitment poster taped to the side of the town grocery store. They became friends, and then more than friends. Their future together can only get better. Sephiroth just doesn't know it yet. SC, Cloudcentric.


**This was written for a fanfic contest on WallMarket, a forum I belong to. The prompts were cliche romance, flowers and towels. I picked Cliche Romance. So, note: Cloud is...intentionally very cliche here. /intentionally./ Poor guy is young and inexperienced and thinks things that he's read in books and movies, poor thing-you can't blame him. And uhhh that's it. I liked this one ;) ALSO! IM update is hopefully very soon :D and many more fics on the way!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own FFVII D8  
**

* * *

It seemed like his nose hadn't stopped running for months. That was the problem with Nibelheim. There was a short summer—which was apparently more like other places' springs—and winter. Biting, furious, chilling winter.

Cloud sniffed hard and covered as much of his face as he could with his scarf. He sniffed again for good measure. His backpack was heavy today and dug into his shoulders despite his puffy coat.

"Excuse me," Cloud mumbled as a girl and a guy pushed past him. He must've been going too slow. Ah, it was Tifa and her new boyfriend, whatshisface. Cloud frowned at their backs and sniffed again, reaching up with a gloved hand to wipe his nose on the inside of his scarf. Gross, but what else could he do?

Cloud slogged past the main part of town. Not too much farther to his house. The grocery store was surprisingly busy; that probably meant another big storm was coming. He'd have to come back and stock up on food with his mom, ugh.

He kept going, but stopped after a few steps. A bright poster was taped to the side of the grocery store. One corner wasn't and it flapped in the bitterly cold wind.

Cloud stopped before it and checked it out. On the poster was a guy. This guy was...

"Woah," Cloud breathed. A guy with long silver hair. Longer than a girl's. Didn't look like a girl's hair, though. The guy was in a cool uniform and he had a sword in his hand. A _sword_. A _long sword_—it looked longer than he was tall, even!

Cloud stood, transfixed, as slush seeped into his old sneakers and froze his toes numb.

'Sephiroth wants YOU for SOLDIER,' said the poster at the top. 'Shin-Ra' was at the bottom.

At this Cloud sobered. No one in his town liked Shin-Ra, he knew. They were the guys who had to do with the reactor no one was allowed near. But... this guy was really cool. At twelve years old, Cloud was hardly worldly, and this recruitment poster was one of the first connections to anything outside _Nibelheim_ he'd ever had.

Cloud smiled fondly at the man—_Sephiroth_—and continued on his way.

For a few days he continued to walk by it. Then, on Friday he saw the poor thing clinging by only one corner, a rip in one of the sides. It mysteriously disappeared, and then turned up later in Cloud's bedroom, carefully taped to the back of his door.

On one of the school computers, Cloud looked him up. His search yielded a lot of results, and he clicked on the third one just because. The guy had a website created by fans. Those fans had a name. _The Silver Elite._

Cloud sat, stupefied, for over half an hour, looking up pictures of Sephiroth that his fans had taken. There he was in some restaurant with two friends. Driving a car. With his sword.

_Masamune._ Cloud remembered the days he had played with sticks and pretended they were swords, whacking everyone. This guy's was real. Masamune, huh.

Due to him having no father and having a mom who was slightly_ eccentric_, Cloud had never had a lot of friends. He used to cry about that, but now it didn't really matter. He... had Sephiroth.

He knew he was being silly, but when doing chores, Cloud would imagine that he had Sephiroth there too, helping to do the dishes or get more milk from the store. Sephiroth shoveled snow much faster than he could. Sephiroth liked to stay up all night and play video games too. Sephiroth freaking rocked.

His mom laughed when Cloud showed her a picture of the guy. "Yes," she said, smiling, "He's pretty cool."

Over the years, something changed. Sephiroth turned into the guy Cloud would come home to and have manly chats with after his incredible dates with pretty girls. ...That is, if he actually ever got one. But then, after an _actual_ date with Tifa (which couldn't have gone more disastrously), Cloud swore off women for good and Sephiroth changed in his eyes again.

When Cloud neared his fifteenth birthday he started to realize something about himself. Girls weren't nearly as interesting to him as other boys his age, it seemed. Also... he couldn't stop thinking about one of his new teachers, a nice guy with messy brown hair and who always gave kids extra help in math.

One day Cloud locked his bedroom door, fell onto the bed and thought about a hard body on top of him, strong fingers with blunt fingernails on his body and hair, softer and longer than anyone's he had ever met between his fingers instead of the usual things he thought of. Afterwards he lay on the floor where he had fallen, a trembling, shaking wreck and eyes as wide as Gil coins.

"Cloud?" his mother called from downstairs. "What was that?"

"N-Nothing!" Cloud yelled back. "Sorry about that."

It took another few months, but Cloud eventually came to terms with it. He was gay. And... he seemed to have a crush on Sephiroth, the man who had been in his thoughts on and off ever since he had been twelve. It was interesting, how he had gone from idolizing the guy because he had a cool sword and looked strong to..._this_.

For his birthday Cloud got a biography of the man, some money and a new scarf. After reading it closely, line for line and absorbing every picture, Cloud began to dream a little bit.

He worked out how they were going to meet.

_"Sorry," Cloud said to his bunkmates. "I have to drop off these papers in the General's office."_

_The six other boys gaped as Cloud confidently swept out of the training gym. His Shin-Ra uniform was clean and pressed; he looked his best. He passed Angeal Hewley, one of the Silver General's best friends and waved. Angeal gave him a thumbs-up._

_The papers Cloud had were __Top Secret. They meant the difference between the life and death of a thousand men. He had to get to Sephiroth!_

_Cloud turned a corner in the fancy building and smacked right into someone. They both fell, and paper went everywhere. Cloud opened his eyes to find he was sitting on exactly the person he was looking for—Sephiroth._

_He was perfect in person. His hair was haphazard and tickled his thighs; his cat-slitted eyes were trained on his. They couldn't look away._

_They snapped out of it at the same time and scrambled away from each other._

_"Sir!" Cloud saluted. "Sorry, Sir!"_

_"It's okay," Sephiroth assured softly. "At ease."_

_They both bent to pick up the papers, and on the last one they reached out at the same time and their hands touched. Both turned red._

_"It's for you, Sir," Cloud said bravely after a moment._

_"Thank you."  
__  
"You're welcome."_

_They both stood there, lost in each other's eyes again, until Sephiroth excused himself with a smile. Cloud went back to his bunk with a smile of his own._

The lonely Sephiroth poster was joined by another, and then another. Little cut-outs from the biography, of Sephiroth and his friends, being promoted to General and even cooking at someone's barbecue, were stuck to his ceiling.

His mom had no clue how much Cloud loved that man. She said it was good 'for teens to have role models.'

School became more bearable once he started after summer. Sephiroth was smart. He liked smart people. If Cloud ever wanted a chance, he'd have to learn things. He needed to focus.

After doing his homework each night he'd stumble into bed tired but excited. The beginnings of a truly daring, life-changing plan were starting to bloom in his heart. For now, though, he'd have to take every day as it came.

"Night, Cloud," his mom called from out in the hall on her way to her own room, "Sleep well."

"You too, Ma!"

Cloud then smiled and bundled under his covers. It was cold now; fall—winter in Nibelheim, since it wasn't summer anymore—was really here. Sleep just wasn't coming tonight, though. Some day this would be a lot easier.

_He was covered in mud, guts and who knew what else. The assignment had been rough, but thanks to his quick thinking the day had been saved._

_A certain someone had beaten him home._

_"Cloud," Sephiroth said worriedly, rising from the couch. "Are you okay?"_

_Replying in a voice hoarse from shouting orders, Cloud replied, "I'm fine. I need a shower. And I'm tired."_

_Sephiroth gently guided him into the bathroom and turned the water on. They stripped carefully, leaving Cloud's soiled uniform in the corner. The shower itself was calming and felt incredibly nice. Cloud pressed his face to Sephiroth's chest and sighed blissfully as the General washed his hair and skin for him. Cloud's hands began to stray, but Sephiroth stopped him with a chuckle and said, kissing his soaked head, "Later."  
__  
They got out and toweled off, then tumbled into their bed, twice the size of the one in Cloud's old room in Nibelheim. Sephiroth curled around Cloud and said softly, "I'm glad you're back."_

_"Me too," Cloud mumbled sleepily. "Love you."_

_"I love you too."_

Cloud snickered into his pillow before finally falling asleep.

Months passed this way. It almost seemed that Cloud would be content like this, having him but only in his mind. Then Cloud looked at his recruitment poster—really looked at it—and decided.

* * *

"I can't see my baby one last time?"

Cloud sighed good-naturedly and let his mother into his bedroom. She was crying but trying not to for his sake. When Cloud announced that he wanted to join the army she hadn't believed it. But his heart was set on it. Her son had done a lot of growing up in the past month. She looked around at the half-packed things. Her eyes fell on the General Sephiroth posters, then the littler pictures all over the place. Ah, she understood now.

Patting his mother's back, Cloud steeled himself for the hell that was undoubtedly in front of him. He would cope, though. He had to.

"Okay," his mom sniffed, running a hand through her blonde locks. "I'm done crying."

"Sure you are," Cloud laughed. He kissed her cheek and resumed packing.

Half an hour later Cloud was checking his watch, waiting for his train. He was scared, terrified, but also excited.

Of course, real life was nothing like dreams. No, he wouldn't meet the General the various ways he had come up with. His life wasn't going to be picture perfect and free of problems like in the books Tifa read. He'd have to suffer, bleed and work for SOLDIER, for everything.

His mom's tentative "_Go get him, okay?_" made him feel both very embarrassed that she had figured it out but also empowered. Being brave and not giving up had gotten him this far; it would continue to work.

"Excuse me," Cloud said clearly as he stepped past someone going too slowly to the train. He sniffed behind his scarf and lugged his bags onto the train. Away from Nibelheim. To Midgar, to Shin-Ra. To SOLDIER. To a new life.

To Sephiroth.


End file.
